Music: Flea — ‘Traffic Lights’ ft. Thom Yorke
The tech billionaires behind Trump’s push to acquire Greenland
Lois Parshley writes: President Donald Trump started his second term with his sights set on Greenland. When Trump first proposed buying the arctic nation during his first administration, it was treated like a joke. But in a phone call last week with Denmark’s prime minister, who controls the autonomous territory’s foreign policy, the president doubled down on his efforts to seize power. In the “aggressive and confrontational” conversation, Trump threatened tariffs if he didn’t get his way. In a news…
Trump is trying to create a borderless American power
Nikhil Pal Singh writes: ‘Kinetic action’ in military terms is the application of force or motion to produce physical damage. Landing a Black Hawk helicopter filled with armed police agents on an apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore, dropping stun grenades and zip-tying residents is kinetic action. Grabbing roofers off the top of a house in upstate New York at gunpoint is kinetic action. Blowing up a small boat loaded with people in the Caribbean Sea: kinetic action. Kinetic action…
What life is like under federal occupation in Minneapolis
Don Moynihan shares this account from someone living and working in Minneapolis who wishes, for their safety, to remain anonymous: I am writing as an ordinary citizen of Minneapolis/St Paul ─ one of America’s 20 largest metro areas. I have kids in the public schools, own a house, go to work every day, pay taxes, volunteer in my community (e.g., coaching youth sports, helping in the schools). I am certainly not a radical of any kind. I had never done…
NYT video analysis of ICE shooting sheds light on contested moments
President Trump and members of his administration have said that Renee Good, the woman killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, “weaponized her vehicle” against the agent who shot her — an interpretation they claim is confirmed by the agent’s cellphone video. “She didn’t try to run him over,” Mr. Trump said on the day of the shooting. “She ran him over.” That description has been contested by local and state officials, who have blamed the…
Two protesters blinded by federal thugs using ‘less-lethal’ munitions
The Guardian reports: Two protesters have been blinded by so-called “less-lethal” munitions deployed by federal officers during an anti-ICE protest last week in Santa Ana, California, according to reports. The blindings come amid rising scrutiny of federal authorities’ use-of-force policies, after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer set off nationwide protests. Widely seen video recorded at the Santa Ana protest showed a homeland security agent shoot Kaden Rummler, 21, in…
Corruption: Tech companies’ access to UK ministers dwarfs that of child safety groups
The Guardian reports: Tech companies have been meeting government ministers at a rate of more than once per working day, enjoying high-level political access that dwarfs that of child safety and copyright campaigners, who called the pattern “shocking” and “disturbing”. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s X, whose Grok AI image generator has sparked outrage with its sexualised images of women and children, were among the US tech companies holding hundreds of meetings with people at the heart of government,…
The real AI talent war is for skilled tradespeople
Wired reports: AI companies like Meta and OpenAI have been offering multimillion-dollar pay packages to top talent, hoping to lure the best researchers and engineers away from their competitors. But there’s another dimension of the AI talent wars that has garnered far less attention: the massive shortage of electricians, plumbers, and heating and cooling technicians in the US who can build the physical data centers that power AI. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that between 2024 and 2034, there…
Music: Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest — ‘Drift’
Judge says Trump, Rubio, and Noem, engaged in ‘an unconstitutional conspiracy’ with targeted deportations
Politico reports: A federal judge handling a lawsuit over the deportation of pro-Palestinian activists excoriated top administration officials, including President Donald Trump, for trampling on the First Amendment and for what the judge described as a fearful approach to freedom. “There was no policy here,” said U.S. District Judge William Young, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee who has been on the federal bench in Boston for 40 years. “What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people.” During…
If Trump invades Greenland, it would result in ‘the end of his presidency,’ GOP Rep. Don Bacon predicts
Omaha World-Herald reports: Rep. Don Bacon on Wednesday ratcheted up his criticism of President Donald Trump’s approach to Greenland, telling The World-Herald that Trump’s comments represent “utter buffoonery” and that invading Greenland would be a “disastrous idea” that could lead to Trump’s impeachment. Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who’s not seeking reelection this fall, said an invasion of Greenland could prompt House Republicans to impeach Trump, who was impeached by the House twice in his first term but acquitted both times…
Medical examiner believes death of man in ICE concentration camp was homicide
The Washington Post reports: When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the Jan. 3 death of detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos at a Texas detention camp, the agency said “staff observed him in distress,” and it gave no cause of death. An employee of El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner told Lunas Campos’s daughter this week that, subject to results of a toxicology report, the office is likely to classify the death as a homicide, according to a recording…
The right’s misogynist rage now targeting liberal white women
Michelle Goldberg writes: If you read conservative media, you might have heard about a new danger stalking our besieged country. This week, Fox News warned about “organized gangs of wine moms” using “antifa tactics” against ICE. According to a column in the right-wing PJ Media, the “greatest threat to our nation” is a “group of ‘unindicted domestic terrorists’ who are just AWFL: Affluent White Liberal Women.” (The acronym is wrong, but never mind.) The Canadian influencer Lauren Chen — who…
It’s easy to imagine an America without ICE
Ben Burgis writes: A typical social media post from the official DHS account last year called for Americans to join ICE to “defend your culture.” Note: Not “enforce the law,” not even “defend our safety” against some imagined horde of violent drug-running narcoterrorists streaming across the border. But defend American culture against the grave threat of too many people living here who supposedly have the wrong ethnic background. This is just one among many recruitment posts that explicitly evoke white…
How Trump is making China great again — and what this means for Europe
At the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev, and Mark Leonard write: Donald Trump did not go into politics to make China great again. But that is what the latest poll of global public opinion from the European Council on Foreign Relations suggests he has done in the eyes of the world. A year on from Trump’s return, in countries across the globe, many people believe China is on the verge of becoming even more…
When we turned time into a line we reimagined past and future
Emily Thomas writes: ‘It’s natural,’ says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘to think that time can be represented by a line.’ We imagine the past stretching in a line behind us, the future stretching in an unseen line ahead. We ride an ever-moving arrow – the present. However, this picture of time is not natural. Its roots stretch only to the 18th century, yet this notion has now entrenched itself so deeply in Western thought that it’s difficult to imagine…